✨ Dark Green, Forest Green

wrist is tattooed...

Dark Green, Forest Green

The young performance artist carefully opens the envelope from Hong Kong with her green—dark green, forest green—fingernails. Perfect color, perfect application. Her thin wrist is tattooed with a band that looks like a beaded bracelet my daughter would carelessly wear and lose. The artist moves her hands as if they were leaves on branches. The green so vibrant a small sparrow would be forgiven to mistake her for a tree. Meanwhile, the letter in the envelope waits: its words mixed with the scent of dusk and birdsong.

—Linda Nemec Foster

✨ This poem is offered for our June theme: Around the World

From Bone Country: Prose Poems, Cornerstone Press, Copyright © 2023. Used by permission of the poet. Photo by Annie Spratt, Unsplash license.